Doubt
by Amadea
Summary: To be with Draco was to forego simplicity because it was never precisely clear what he was thinking. How he was feeling. While Draco never seemed in doubt of Theodore’s affection, he often let his own go unspoken. And so Theodore was constantly in doubt.


**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note: **Written in response to Pinky Green's Quotes/Sentences Challenge. The sentences I used are listed at the end; I didn't use them in their exact form throughout the story, but hopefully they are recognizable.

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**Doubt**

-.-.-

To be with Draco Malfoy was to be with a boy who had so effectively compartmentalized himself it was, at times, like dating entirely different people. Flares of bravado, stints of cowardice, and streaks of meanness all peppered Theodore's interactions with him, but so did a rare quality of quiet thoughtfulness, perseverance, and wit.

To be with Draco was to forego simplicity because, for Theo at least, it was never precisely clear what Draco was thinking. How he was feeling. While Draco never seemed in doubt of Theodore's affection, he often let his own go unspoken.

Theodore was constantly in doubt.

-.-.-

"I wonder if you can you hear my heart."

It was one of those rare sunny weekends, and all the other students had surfaced outside to enjoy the warmth and laze in the grass, leaving the Slytherin common room to Draco and Theodore.

"I love you, I love you. I love you." Draco turned his face into the worn knit of Theodore's sweater. "That's what it's saying."

Theodore ran his fingers through the fine, almost white strands of Draco's hair, creating great whorls with his thumb. "Maybe." But Theodore thought it was saying _Don't leave me, don't leave me _because everyone always did. And then, "I'm tracing crop circles into your skull."

"It feels good," Draco said and tucked his chilly fingers just inside the waist of Theodore's pants. It was something he did with regular frequency, but it always sent a pleasant thrill across Theo's skin.

"You love me, right?" he blurted.

Draco lifted his head, grey eyes guarded. He studied Theo a moment, drawing his hand back. "Do you doubt that I do?" It wasn't a denial, or confirmation, or even a challenge.

"No," he said slowly. "Yes."

Draco pushed himself up onto his elbow with a short exhale that wasn't really a sigh. He looked around the room and then back at Theodore. "It's not an immediate thing, love isn't."

Theodore pressed his palms into his eyes with a groan. "Fuck."

Draco gave a short, good-natured laugh and pulled on Theo's arm. "Come on," he cajoled.

"Fuck, I knew you were going to say that." Theodore kept his hands clamped firmly over his face. "This is humiliating; falling in love should be like Polaroids: instant."

"It would be easier," Draco agreed hesitantly.

"This changes everything," said a muffled Theodore.

"It doesn't change anything."

"No, it does," Theodore retorted, whipping his hands from his face and glaring, red-eyed, at Draco. "I wanted you to be the one boy I _didn't_ have to worry about." He swallowed thickly and then looked away sharply, jaw tight, eyes pinching. His fingers clenched and released against sweaty palms.

Draco sat with his head in his hands, fingers pushing through his white hair. "I'm too young to feel this old." He pushed off from the sofa, disappearing into the Seventh Years' dorm. Theodore pressed his knuckles hard into his forehead.

-.-.-

Draco had thin hands and long fingers, one of the first things Theodore had noticed about him and one of the many things he liked about him. Sometimes the smallest things took up the most room in his heart. When he found Draco in the boy's dorm, he was sitting on the floor, back against the bed frame and box springs, those same artful hands loose between his knees. His pale eyes lifted to Theodore's drawn face and he stood almost warily.

"What do you want?" His tone was resentful.

"I want to be friends again."

"We're more than friends," Draco pointed out stiffly.

"I know; I love—" Theodore started over. "I like that about us." He hesitated, but then went on. "Sometimes it seems like we're a bad couple."

Draco scoffed. "We're the perfect couple. We're just not in a perfect relationship."

"You don't love me."

"That would be the imperfect part of the relationship," Draco quipped dryly. After a moment his expression softened and he said more soberly, "Will you wait? Until I love you?"

There was an ache deep in Theodore's chest and he closed his eyes against the image of a temptingly earnest Draco, a Draco that he desperately wanted to believe, wanted to please. He knew he could say _No, _he could walk out. He nodded his head once.

"Yes."

He opened his eyes when he felt Draco's breath against his jaw. Hesitating only a moment to catch Theodore's eye, Draco kissed him where his jaw met his ear, the column of his throat, the corner of his mouth. It was a melting sort of pleasure when Draco did this. They were gentle kisses: apologetic ones, regretful ones, repairing ones.

When Draco slowly began tugging Theodore's tie loose, he let his head fall back with an almost tortured noise at the back of his throat, submitting to increasingly urgent kisses as Draco worked open the buttons on his shirt. He backed Theodore into the wall and bit at the base of his throat, his mouth hot against Theodore's collarbone.

-.-.-

Theodore knew the hardest part about waiting was not knowing whether he was waiting for anything at all. It seemed that Draco _must've_ known that, evidenced in the way he watched Theo watch him from opposite ends of the dining hall. And sometimes, he could feel Draco's eyes on him even when he was not looking back. Still, Theodore kept his questions to himself. _Do you love me yet?_ and _When will you say it? _and the significantly more terrifying _Are you going to leave me? _ He felt that their relationship was as fragile as a butterfly's wing, and Theodore would not be the one to break it.

"You've been quiet lately," Draco observed mildly one night as he buttered a roll. "Are you upset with me?" His tone was so pleasantly flippant that the only sign he was worried about the answer was the way he ran his thumb hard against his index finger.

"Upset with you for taking the last roll, maybe," Theodore said, and felt Draco's eyes on him for a long moment after. That was the closest they came to talking about it until the potions incident.

Severus Snape was well respected by the Slytherins, but Theodore enjoyed a certain amount of distance from the man in any case, and today especially. Everyone knew Snape got nasty on amortentia day. His hair was black as an oil slick and he moved like a panther, silently surveying the students' progress. He looked rather more gaunt than usual and Theodore wondered for a moment what it was that he smelled when students brewed the love potion. He'd heard rumors that it might be lilies.

Theodore himself was driven to distraction: billowing forth from every cauldron was an overwhelming combination of a sparse, soapy fragrance and the faintly chemical smell of hair product. Theodore knew the potion smelled the way it did because of the way he felt about Draco. But what did Draco smell?

He was wondering if there wasn't also a bit of winter sun-on-the-window-pane scent, and whether that could be a scent at all, when he added the crushed Cardamom before he was supposed to and the entire contents of his cauldron went up in black smoke.

He could sense Snape behind him, the way one can when trouble is near. Fingers dug sharply into his shoulder, and Theodore turned his head just slightly. They were the calloused hands of the potions master.

"You would be so careless to waste rare ingredients?" The words seemed to almost whistle through Snape's teeth. "Even now, in your seventh year, when you know better?"

Theodore steeled himself. Snape, like Draco, was unpredictable. It must have been a Slytherin trait. Everyone in the room had fallen silent.

"Well?"

Theodore wet his lips. "Professor—"

Before he could finish, Snape had seized his wrist, forced Theodore's hand open, and slapped his wand so sharply across his palm that Theodore bit back a cry. From somewhere to his left, Draco took a step forward. Snape's chest was heaving, and slowly—almost gently, as if realizing what he had done—he released his grip and stepped back from Theodore.

"Start again," he hissed, but without any real venom.

Heart pounding, and unable to look anyone in the eye, Theodore flexed his hand. It hurt. Beside him, Draco stood at his own cauldron, standing very still. Theodore began organizing his ingredients carefully, and with only his good hand. He could sense people slowly returning to their own work, the shuffle of their feet and the murmur of their voices a good show of pretending nothing had happened. Theodore was surprised when Draco gently took his hand, discreet beneath the table. His cool thumb lightly smoothed the welt of his palm, and Theodore began to cry.

-.-.-

It was afterward, when everyone else headed back to the common room, that Draco drew Theodore in the opposite direction. He was still holding Theodore's hand, which was unusual for him because he often liked to keep it private. No one even knew about them, not really.

Carefully, thoughtfully, Draco turned Theodore's hand palm up. The welt was an angry red, and Theodore's fingers protested being fully extended. Draco pressed a cool kiss to Theo's palm, and when he lifted his eyes they were sad.

"We should have Madam Pomfrey give you some salve."

Theodore's chest constricted with a terrible, longing ache but he nodded and together they walked down the empty hall, the sounds of their steps echoing off the high ceilings.

-.-.-

"And how did this happen?" Promfrey wanted to know.

Theodore was seated in a straight-back wooden chair, Pomfrey rubbing the salve into the mark on his hand while Draco watched from the doorway. As much as everyone liked to make fun of Pomfrey for her nervous antics and strict policies, she was a shrewd woman and not much avoided her notice.

Theodore's chin lifted a little. He could feel Draco watching him intently, a silent but magnetic presence. "I'm all right."

"I know; I just made you all right. That wasn't the question."

Theodore let the silence stretch on, partly because he didn't know what to say and partly because it was just easier to be quiet. Finally, "Professor Snape was upset with me."

"He didn't deserve it," Draco said vehemently from the door, one hand clenching into a tight fist at his side. Madam Pomfrey didn't say anything, but she drew herself a little straighter and took extra care with the bandage she was wrapping around his hand.

"It will feel better by tomorrow," she advised as they left. "And Mr. Nott? You were right to tell me. Even if it was hard."

The flickering sconces in the hall threw huge shadows stretching from the wall to the ceiling, silent giants in step with the boys.

"Was it?" Draco asked suddenly. "Difficult to tell her, I mean."

Theodore shrugged. "No. I guess. A little."

"But you did anyway."

A wry, kind of crooked smile changed Theodore's face. "Snape is going to hate me for this."

A moment passed in silence and then Draco said suddenly, "I've got something to tell you, then, too." He pulled Theodore out of the hallway and into a shadowed alcove behind a broad-shouldered suit of armor. His kiss was feverish and he worked his tie loose at the same time, pale fingers moving nimbly against silky green.

"Nott," he said earnestly, the tip of his nose cold against Theodore's face when he pressed another kiss to his mouth. "There are a lot of things I like about you. Like—" another kiss—"the way your handwriting looks, and how straight your hair is. How dark your eyes are—" another kiss—"and how you always nod when you're listening, and how it feels to kiss you." That statement punctuated, of course, by a kiss. "The mole on the back of your neck, the way your clothes fit you, the way your voice sounds when you're tired or you've just woken up." Draco hooked a finger inside the waist of Theodore's trousers and tugged him against his body. It was an almost playful gesture, but even in the shadows, Draco's face was made of serious lines, his pale mouth drawn down at the corners. "How you look right now." He was breathing heavily and he paused, bracing his hands against the wall, bowing his head beside Theodore's. "Sometimes I do love you, but I'm terrified to say it."

"Sometimes you love me?" Theodore repeated, trying to keep the pleasure and the hope—the sense that this was somehow impossible—from his voice.

"Always," Draco amended. "Always I love you. I love you, I love you. I love you."

"Oh," Theodore said. His heart was hammering in his chest but he tried for a light tone. "Well, now that the chase is over I've got no interest."

"I would wait until you came around again. For you, I would wait." Draco made no attempt to be glib; his narrow face was serious, his eyes intense.

"Oh, good." Theodore fidgeted a moment. "It looks like I've come around again already. That was quick."

Draco surged forward and pressed his mouth to Theo's and the kiss was flooded with sweetness and a slow burning heat that threatened to turn into an inferno.

For the first time, Theodore had no doubt.

-.-.-

_Fin_

- - -

**Note:** The sentences I used for this challenge are as follows.

1. Your head on my chest, I'm tracing crop circles into your skull - I wonder if you can hear my heart; you say it's beating "I love you, I love you." That may be true, but I think it's saying "Don't leave me, don't leave me." because everyone always does, and I'd like you to stay.

2. Falling in love should be like polaroids: instant.

3. We are the perfect couple. We're just not in a perfect relationship.

4. I'm too young to feel this old.

5. Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.

6. I think the hardest part about waiting is not knowing whether you're waiting for anything at all.


End file.
